Latinization, Local Languages, and Literacies in the Roman West

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The patchwork of local languages which existed across the western provinces in the Iron Age was radically reconfigured by the rise of Latin. Latinization, Local Languages and Literacies in the Roman West offers a detailed anatomy of the local and regional patterning across Britain, Gaul, the Germanies and the Iberian Peninsula primarily from the later Republic to the end of the Principate. The chapters draw on a combination of various sets of evidence and an interdisciplinary perspective--historical, archaeological, sociolinguistic, and epigraphic--to uncover local voices, tracking ’differential Latinization’, and revealing the probable survival of local languages, alongside, or even to the exclusion of, Latin in some communities in non-Mediterranean areas. The results underscore the variety of factors involved in language change and the importance of sensitivity to local communities. By including everyday writing in their epigraphic evidence, the volume reveals regionality in the varieties of Latin used and disparities in engagement in both the epigraphic habit and broader literate practices. New data enable the description of types of literacies, and movement away from debates on provincial percentages of literacy and from generalizations about associated social dynamics. Contributors to the volume grapple with the ’characterful’ datasets they have created and collated, the careful treatment of which enables the exploration of a range of themes vital for understanding provincial life. The complexity uncovered by these studies will be a starting point for future investigations.

Alex Mullen (PhD, FSA, FRHistS) is Professor of Ancient History and Sociolinguistics at the University of Nottingham.
She previously held research fellowships at the Universities of Cambridge (Magdalene) and Oxford (All Souls) and was Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded LatinNow project exploring life and languages in the Roman western provinces. In recognition of her interdisciplinary work, in 2018 she won a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Classics.

Anna Willi is obtained her PhD from Zürich University, Switzerland. Following her postdoctoral research on Roman writing equipment, literacy, and non-monumental inscriptions as a Research Fellow on the ERC-funded LatinNow project, she was awarded a research grant from the Gerda Henkel foundation for her project Tabulae Ceratae (TabCer) on Roman stylus tablets as everyday objects. She is currently Curator of Ancient Mediterranean Life at the British Museum.